At the bell’s summons, Offred descends to the sitting room and kneels. Cora, Rita, Nick, and Serena arrive, waiting for the Commander, who will complete the “household.” As in earlier scenes, Offred disengages her mind and returns to a crucial flashback of her family’s attempt to escape oppression. By faking visas, packing a picnic, and drugging their daughter, they emulate nonchalance and drive expectantly toward the Canadian border. Offred’s flashback memories are interrupted by the Commander’s abrupt entry into the parlor, a violation of house protocol.
Exerting a privilege of the man of the house, the Commander unlocks a box and withdraws a Bible, which is off-limits to females. The women stare at him as he calls for a drink of water and dons reading glasses. As he indifferently reads passages from Genesis, Offred recalls reading from the Beatitudes at the Red Center and Moira’s failed attempt to feign illness. Offred remembers how Moira was hauled out to the Science Lab and beaten on the soles of her feet, a devious form of torture, leaving no readily visual evidence, administered with frayed steel cables by the darkly menacing Angels. The Handmaids could do little for her except make small gestures of complicity—steal packets of sugar from the cafeteria and pass them to her during the night.
Chapter 16 details the mating ceremony, the central event in Gilead’s struggle to survive nuclear havoc. The ritual takes place in a genteel canopied bed. As Offred, robed and veiled, lies between Serena’s outspread thighs and clutches her hands, the Commander, also in uniform, mounts Offred and ejaculates. Serena then coldly dispatches the Handmaid from the scene. Offred returns to her room, a setting medieval and nun-like in its innocence and purity. She yearns for Luke’s embrace, for worth, for the sound of her real name.
Frenziedly repeating “I want,” Offred obeys her urges and gets out of bed. In her zigzag longings for an undelineated assuagement of emotional unrest, she sets out to steal something. Once down the stairs and into the darkened sitting room, she hopes for a knife but, instead, pinches off a fading daffodil bloom to leave in her room for the next Handmaid to discover. A click signals the approach of another person. Nick slides into view and pulls her to him for a kiss. He passes on a message: the Commander wants to see her in his office the next day.
